Body burned beyond recognition in a cabin fire near Fairfax

A Marin County fire offical talks with family members at the fire scene where a body was found in the a small cabin that burned down early Friday at 40 Meadow Way in Fairfax on Nov. 30, 2012. (IJ photo/Robert Tong)

Coroner's investigators were working Friday to identify a body found burned beyond recognition in the ashes of a small cabin in the woods near Fairfax.

Marin County Fire Department investigators were also on the scene all day, trying to determine the cause of the blaze, which broke out at about 1:30 a.m. Friday and destroyed the 25-by-35-foot cabin at 40 Meadow Way, an unincorporated area near the end of Cascade Canyon.

There was no immediate word on the gender or approximate age of the unidentified victim.

"When somebody is burned beyond recognition, you no longer have the ability to visually identify the person," explained Lt. Keith Boyd of the sheriff's department's coroner's division. "You can look at fingerprints, and a lot of times in burn cases fingerprints aren't an option. Then we look at dental history, and there are situations when dental history isn't an option in fires. Then we get down to DNA."

After neighbors reported seeing flames in the Cascade Canyon area, the rustic one-story structure was engulfed in flames when a Ross Valley fire crew arrived during Friday morning's torrential rain. Crews dragged 700 feet of firehose up the driveway in the downpour. The storm then eased up "in a dead calm" and the winds that had fanned the flames seemed to vanish, according to Ross Valley Battalion Chief Brian McCarthy.

"We put it out fairly quickly," he said. "It was pretty much all burned up. There wasn't much left."

Crews from the county and Kentfield assisted Ross Valley during the incident.

"Our investigation team is out there right now," said Marin County fire Chief Jason Weber, adding that it was too early to speculate on how the fire started.